The following (a slightly edited version),was given by Nora Callahan at the 12th Annual Drug Policy Foundation Conference on May 21, 1999
I'm going to talk about the prison industrial complex today, more particularly, the privatization of prisons. I could stand before you with statistics that would shock you at first and then I'd have to watch your eyes glaze over, so we will put a few statistics on the overhead and talk for a little while about what this means, and should mean to every American.
Corporate profits are being made in a grand scale on the backs of American prisoners. Corporate profits soar as prisons overflow with people, our fellow citizens, many who are nonviolent people who endure inhumane treatment in the name of the war on drugs and our war on crime.
Corporate profits are vested in inhumanity and in how well they can guise the inhumanity and it is spreading world-wide. These prison corporations do it well. And it's happened before, people trading in humans and profits "earned" by some in taking away the freedom of many.
Political agendas have flourished by turning entire segments of citizenry into captives. This is nothing new. The historical reference has been given simple terms by which they are remembered today. American Slavery immediately comes to mind; Stalinism, we all know at least of few details of that terrible regime. The most renown era of history in which relocation camps became concentration camps, then death camps we now call Nazism and the Holocaust followed.
We don't yet know what name this American era will one day be called, because it isn't over yet. In fact, it has just begun and before it's roots sink deeper, we need to end the drug war and the war on crime and all war on American people because you can't win a war like that. Everyone looses, except the stockholders.
Too much money is now being made on prisoners. The taxpayer foots the bill, but corporate and community profits are keeping the scales balanced too keenly, therefore it is our responsibility not to act as "good Germans" and take nothing more than casual notice. This system, this prison industrial complex is working very efficiently and profits outweigh some of the cost, and that is our growing concern.
In Texas, a group of children left their chairs in Sunday School, got down on their knees and clasped their hands and prayed. They prayed that a new prison would open in their neighborhood. They prayed fervently so that their under-educated parents could earn $10,000 more dollars a year than a tenured teacher and so that their community could prosper.
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